I wrote about Ponyo yesterday on The Eastern Edge and then watched it again last night after a 5k run.

Something about running on a cold night along a polluted river made me think again about how few things are handmade or done manually anymore, how we try to make everything comfortable and easy, and how cavalier we are about the damage our laziness causes.

I just felt like watching Ponyo again.

I’m all too aware that I’ll never ever get a job as an artist at Ghibli, but I couldn’t help but scrawl a quick Ponyo in my notebook before dashing out of the coffee shop this morning.

Last summer, my little 100 yen notebook and pencil got lost during an epic house cleaning.  At the time I figured I’d just take a break until it turned up, and then when it did I’d let loose with everything I’d dreamed up in the down time.   Unfortunately, two unexpected things happened.

The first thing is that the notebook and pencil didn’t turn up until this week, nearly six months after I first misplaced them.  The second, and more unfortune thing, or fortunate depending on how you look at it, is the fact that I’ve had so many different ideas over the past six months that I no longer have any idea where to being! 

Having lots of ideas is usually a good thing.  However, when you are a procrastinator who also has the attention span of a ferret after a double espresso, too many ideas floating around your scattered brain is not conducive to getting things done.

Well, I’m going to try messing around with some ideas over the next few weeks and see what jumps out at me.  Then I’ll get to work trying to get something going here.

Until then…

Okay, no more random scribbles. This is the last one.  It’s organized scribbles from now on!
I’m currently in the middle of an Aikido marathon that’s having me up at 5am daily so I haven’t been drawing much.  However,  I expect to be back to it and ready with the first four panel strips in mid-August.

Much like the previous one, this one didn’t turn out like I’d hoped either.
Oh, well.  Back to the proverbial drawing board (proverbial for me, because I don’t actually have a drawing board, or a drawing table, or anything else they don’t sell at 100 yen stores!)

This one didn’t turn out quite the way I’d imagined.
The hands look deformed, among other things.  Argh!
Need to buckle down and practise more if I want to turn some of my scripts into strips in the not too distant future!